AUSTIN -- A controversial bill that places restrictions on abortions was passed by the Texas House on Wednesday and may go to the full Senate as soon as Friday.

Today, the matter goes to the Senate for a committee vote.

Amid scattered protests and five arrests, the House voted 96-49 to approve restrictions that would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks in the vast majority of cases. It also would require abortion clinics to upgrade into ambulatory surgical centers and demand that abortion doctors have admitting privileges at hospitals.

Supporters say the rules are meant to protect women, but opponents say they're meant to greatly restrict legal abortions. Opponents say they would close all but five of the state's 36 licensed clinics.

REPORTER

Marty Schladen

Whether supporters' goal was to protect women has been the subject of heated debate over the past two days.

While arguing against the bill on Tuesday, state Rep. Raphael Anchia, D-Dallas, said only 1.3 percent of abortions in Texas are performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy and of those, 95 percent are for medical reasons.

He was arguing unsuccessfully to give doctors more latitude to decide whether abortions are needed to protect women's health.

The bill's author, state Rep. Jody Laubenberg, R-Parker, answered by citing a provision in the bill that outlined circumstances under which doctors could perform abortions after 20 weeks.

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The bill says abortions can be performed during that period if the pregnancy, in "the physician's reasonable medical judgment, so complicates the medical condition of the woman that, to avert the woman's death or a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function É"

Anchia countered that the terms in the provision were not defined and that doctors can't know in advance whether harm will be irreversible.

State Rep. Dawnna M. Dukes, D-Austin, joined other Democrats in saying Republicans were unconcerned with women's health.

"This was not about the health of the mothers," she said in a press conference Tuesday night. "This was about politics for the primary."

But state Rep. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said Republicans were merely fulfilling a promise in passing the legislation.

"We were sent here to be pro-life, pro-family, pro-liberty legislators," said Creighton, chairman of the House Republican Caucus.

Some legal observers have said the bill cannot survive a court challenge, but a supporter, state Rep. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, said it had been vetted by numerous lawyers before it was filed.

State Rep. Mary Gonzalez, D-El Paso, and other members of her caucus said the bill would violate court strictures against placing undue burdens on women's access to abortion.

Some abortion clinics have complained that the requirement to upgrade to ambulatory surgical centers is beyond their means. Closure of the clinics would mean that many women in rural Texas would be much farther than abortion services than they are now.

Gonzalez introduced a bill that would exempt clinics with no other clinics within 50 miles from the some of the bill's requirements, but it failed in a vote taken largely along party lines.

Laubenberg, the abortion bill's author, said clinics have plenty of time to come up with the money to upgrade before the bill would take effect in September 2014.

Wednesday's vote was largely along partisan lines, but state Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, voted with Republicans in support of the bill. The rest of the El Paso delegation, Democrats Joe Moody, Naomi Gonzalez, Mary Gonzalez and Marisa Marquez, voted against the bill.

The abortion legislation became a national controversy last month, when an identical version of the bill died in the Texas Senate amid a Democratic filibuster and a wildly cheering crowd that disrupted proceedings.

As the House voted Wednesday, four or five opponents in the gallery started yelling and were escorted out by state troopers. One who refused to walk out was carried by her arms and legs.

Before the bill was debated in the House on Tuesday, Laubenberg said she would oppose any amendments. All of the 27 amendments that were offered died.

One was a measure proposed by Dukes that would extend the period during which mothers could surrender their babies to "emergency infant care providers" such as hospitals or police stations with no questions asked.

Texas already has a law allowing such surrenders within 60 days of birth, but Dukes amendment would extend it to a year.

The intent behind the "Baby Moses" law is to save babies who are the product of unwanted pregnancies from abuse or neglect.

Laubenberg said she opposed the amendment because it included language saying the surrender is allowed "unless the department of Family and Protective Services provides a waiver" for an abortion after 20 weeks.

Dukes said the bill passed Tuesday would prohibit such waivers. She said he had to include the language in the amendment to meet a legal requirement that it be relevant to the abortion bill.

Marty Schladen may be reached at mschladen @elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.